Blitzed(80)

"No, they go home, but you'll still have one standing outside the room from eleven o'clock on. By the way, you want to make sure the room's all done by midnight, the guard has strict orders to lock the gate on it then and not open it up to anyone short of God himself until seven tomorrow morning. So unless you want to get possibly locked in there, I suggest getting done quickly."

Nodding, I left Harry alone and went to the locker room to change. I actually had two lockers, one for my tour guide clothes and another for my janitorial clothes, which were nothing more than an oversized set of faded blue coveralls with a JANM patch stitched over the left breast pocket. They were torn in two places and a bit smelly from the constant exposure to chemicals and cleaning solvents, but at least I could wear regular clothes underneath. Pulling the coveralls on over my jeans and sweatshirt, I shivered still. To save money, the JANM shut off the heat at closing time, except in certain exhibit rooms. Sure it was Los Angeles, but it still got chilly in winter once the sun went down.

I found the box on top of my locker, chuckling at the look of the device. It seriously looked like a gas mask, with a clear face shield that gave me pretty good vision while the mouth and nose were covered by a sealed section that had a filter at the front. I tried it on and found it not too uncomfortable, so I figured I'd give it a try. It couldn't be worse than breathing the chemicals. Besides, it was obviously not a cheap gadget, and it had to have at least some sort of positive effect on my sinuses.

I got to work, first taking my cart full of supplies over to the Kokuho exhibit. Things were delayed temporarily as one of the guards gave my cart a once-over, making sure my broom was actually a broom, I guess. It didn't take too long, and I soon was able to get to work.

After using my giant puff ball feather duster on the cases, it was eventually time to get the floor. I pushed the large dust mop around, working in first clockwise then counterclockwise laps to get every bit of dust from the floor. As I pushed, my eyes were drawn to the two famous katana, nestled in the same glass case on stands draped in contrasting silk. Masamune was nestled on the purest white silk to denote the nobility of the sword and its maker, while the supposedly demon-possessed Muramasa blade sat on blood red silk. They didn't have handles or blade guards, but were just the pure steel of their original designs. They were both beautiful, even to someone like me. The way the lights glimmered off the steel, which was marked with the wave-like design the Japanese called a hamon, the true sign of a great katana, left both absolutely breathtaking. I knew I'd get plenty of time to look at the blades over the following three months, but wanted to take this first opportunity before the exhibit opened to the public the next day to appreciate it before I was leading groups of junior high school kids and such through later on.

Getting back to my work, I left the Kokuho room and went back to the supply room, getting the floor buffer and chemicals that I hated. At the last minute, I remembered my mask and turned back, grabbing that before starting my work.

It's an unappreciated art, learning how to use an industrial floor buffer. If you don't know what you’re doing, even a strong man will end up exhausting himself as he tries to fight the inertia of the giant spinning disc underneath the machine. A woman my size could be whipped around in circles until she's flung off if she wasn't careful. I'd first learned doing a stint as a fast food worker two years prior on a different machine, but the principles were the same. I had gotten the hang of the JANM monster and could make progress, but still wasn't as much an expert as some of the others, I was sure.

With the face mask on, I also decided to put in some headphones, listening to a mix of music on an old iPod I’d bought when my finances were better. I'd have preferred to listen to Pantera live, but it was better than the monotonous burr of the buffer.

Every hundred feet or so, I had to stop the buffer to unplug it and change outlets, so I missed the initial attack on the Kokuho room. The guards had changed over perhaps fifteen minutes earlier when I saw mist coming from around the corner of the next corridor. Stopping my buffer, I approached the corner, more curious than anything else.

The mist was thicker around the corridor, nearly smoke, and I walked through it towards the Kokuho room, trying to figure out what was going on. I passed by a fire alarm and pulled it, sure that somehow a fire had started, maybe due to a short in the wiring or a light overheating. I kept going because I wanted to make sure the guard wasn't injured, and I didn't feel any heat yet.

The mist got thicker until I could barely see my hand in front of my face, so I was surprised and shocked when a man came out of the Kokuho exhibit room and bowled me over. He hadn’t been anticipating me, as he was knocked down too, both of us falling to the floor, him on top of me. As I fell, I saw him clearly, his mouth and nose covered in a mask similar to mine. My head hit the tile, and blackness dropped like a curtain over my vision.





Chapter 3





Jordan





I woke up in a bed, confused and disoriented. I blinked and realized I wasn't in a hospital, but in what looked like a log cabin of all things. Two of the walls were the sort of rounded log appearance that I associated with cabins at least, while the other two were thick-looking unfinished planks that looked like older wood. There were no windows, and the door was shut pretty solidly. The room was lit by a simple battery powered lantern that cast a slightly yellow LED shine around the room, not enough to really see, but enough to get the basics. I blinked again, wincing at the pain in the back of my head. I'd certainly hit my head rather solidly, that was for sure. "Hello?"